Bøgholm Lake in autumn

Reproduction rare French 19th Century hollow profile frame with leaf and rope mouldings, water gilded

Excellent condition

This landscape is characteristic of Hansen’s art in its beautifully observed sky and hypnotically realistic foreground vegetation. The melancholy, slightly otherworldly light is also typical of his work; it floods the countryside beneath the high, striated cloudscape, and yet we are aware of dusk waiting in the wings, as the sense of coming autumn pervades the empty tracts of land and forest. Hansen’s landscapes are essentially unpeopled, yet they seem full of significance: brooded over by the divine presence we find in the work of Caspar David Friedrich, they become an allegorical expression of the transience and frailty of human life. The flicks of white paint which highlight the leaves and stalks in the foreground imitate Constable’s ‘snow’, which Hansen may have noted when he was studying in England; however, he uses it perhaps more realistically and to greater effect even than Constable himself.